Union home minister passes the NCTC buck to NDA rule in letter to chief ministers

The group of ministers (GoM) set up in 2001 after the Kargil conflict, headed by then home minister L.K. Advani, sowed the genesis of a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in its present form.

This was what Union home minister P. Chidambaram had tried to argue in a note attached by him to a letter he sent to 10 chief ministers (CMs) who have objected to the NCTC.

Chidambaram said the idea of having an agency on the lines of the NCTC germinated from the 2001 GoM report during the NDA rule.

He also sought to counter another argument, i.e. why the NCTC had been kept under the intelligence bureau (IB), since the agency was itself unaccountable to Parliament and by extension, the NCTC would be the same.

Chidambaram maintained that the decision to keep the NCTC within the IB was also in line with the recommendations of the 2001 GoM.

'As regards the location of the NCTC, after considering different options, the cabinet committee on security decided to place it within the IB. In this regard, the government was guided by the recommendations of the group of ministers (2001) that IB shall be "the nodal intelligence agency for counter intelligence and counter terrorism within the country",' Chidambaram wrote in the note.

He further stated that the Multi-Agency Centre, which is being subsumed into the NCTC, was also the brainchild of the 2001 GoM.

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Union home minister passes the NCTC buck to NDA rule in letter to chief ministers